The weather forecast for the second weekend in December was predicted to be cold. Maybe it would be cold enough to spend a night out in the tent and test some of my equipment and methods for winter camping. I needed to know if using two sleeping bags for staying warm would work. So, instead of just pitching my tent in the back yard, I decided to duplicate the conditions encountered in the cold by camping at Blackwoods Campground in Acadia National Park.

After setting up the tent and spreading out my gear, I found myself having time to wait for the sun to set before I ate supper. I brought double portions of noodles and pepperoni to eat to fight off the cold. I cooked and consumed one-pot servings for more than an hour and a half. In between servings I nibbled on trail mix. By the time I had finished, I had eaten all my food; soup, noodles, pepperoni, cheese, granola bars and hot chocolate.

By then, the sun had set. When the sun sets in winter, twilight doesn’t linger. The sun goes down, the remaining light lasts only minutes, then the stars appear. I decided to watch the sky while lying in two sleeping bags on top of an insulated pad.

Somehow the stars seemed closer than normal on a December night. More so, say, than in July. Stars and treetops mingled in the clear, black sky. It might have been my breath vapor before my eyes, or the way they were watering from the cold, but the stars’ twinkling was heightened, brightened. I wondered if it was this cold in space.

I realized that they are actually suns, but the stars looked like anything but the blazing sun. A thought occurred to me while I lay with the foam pad separating my body from the heat-robbing ground, eyes heavenward. Maybe if I held my gloved hands toward space, I could capture a remnant of heat given off by those distant suns. I raised my hands to the sky like you might to a wood stove and after a while noticed that, if anything, they got colder.

Because impaired judgment, like that, is a sign of hypothermia, I crawled into the tent. I found some more food: dried apricots and peanut butter. I took a couple of glops of peanut butter, chewed some apricots and settled in to listen to the night sounds. Once the sun went down, the wind came up.

It sounded like a huge force was pushing the wind. It roared like an avalanche of sound, the top of which must have been in Manitoba somewhere. I thought of it gaining speed as it reached Ontario and the Great Lakes, finally attaining full power here on the island before rushing out to sea.

From inside the tent I heard the whistling spruce, fir and pine needles in the treetops. Though the wind howled overhead, the tent flapped only slightly in the protection of the forest. The woods clacked and creaked all night from the force.

Other than the noises generated by the wind or of the wind itself, there were no other sounds. None. The chattering of insects, frogs, birds and rodents that usually accompanies summer nights was absent, dormant – which is what I was to become as I fell asleep, trying to visualize all of the river valleys crossed by the wind on its way from Manitoba to here. I tried to see through the wind’s eyes what the landscape looked like as it swept its way here from northern Manitoba. I got as far as Vermont when sleep arrived.

The arctic high that blew in during the night sent the temperature into the “belows.” I slept warm inside two sleeping bags, one of down stuffed inside a synthetic. I had slept with my water bottles in the sleeping bag so they wouldn’t freeze. In the first light of Sunday morning I made hot cereal inside the tent while I stayed inside the sleeping bag. Then came the leap into the outside air.

From the time I left the tent to meet the cold, things started to slow down. Movement was difficult but necessary to create heat in the muscles. The simplest motion, such as trying to tighten a strap, required strength that the cold tried to deny.

At dawn the sun rose like a distant star, producing no heat. The only difference between night and day was light. It might as well have been just another cosmic body, lifeless and cold. Groaning all the while, I loaded my day pack with stove, cup, ground pad, bagels, peanut butter and soup for lunch, then set out to climb Cadillac Mountain.

The hike, to a spot on the trail called Featherbed, was gradual and fairly easy, with only a dusting of snow underfoot. Walking amidst a world of white snow and blue sky worked to counteract the cold from the night before.

The views of the landscape in winter and the brilliant blue of ocean and sky combined in a sight which became hard to leave. However, a chill and a shiver told me that it was time to go.

While winter camping is not for the heat seekers among us, to those who can embrace cold and dark, it is one more way to enjoy the outdoors. Leaving the island and driving past the frozen shores at Thompson Island I reflected on the overnight and the long, dark night of winter.

Brad Viles is an avid hiker and Appalachian Trail maintainer.